Good Morning

Today I woke up to find that The Bloggess had found my church shoe buckle story funny enough to retweet, which is the high praise. Also if you haven't read some of the other hilarious / embarrassing stories people have been sharing with her, read this post from her blog.

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And if you can't remember this story from my childhood, read a longer version here. It is simultaneously the funniest and most embarrassing thing I have ever done in church (or anywhere else). It continues to haunt me almost two decades later, even though my mother stopped telling the story as soon as I asked by bursting into hysterical tears at my grandmother's house.

When I crawled out of bed, my neck had locked up and hurt like mad. I carefully took out the heating pad, trying not to move my head, and then figured I'd get cleaned up before I curled up to relax my neck muscles.

I grabbed my shampoo bottle, LUSH I Love Juicy, and opened the lid. It is one of those lids that open when you press down one side and close when you press the other, like a seesaw. When it clicked open, it spat several droplets out, one on my arm, a few in the tub, and one in my left eye.

I Love Juicy is made of fruit juices. Also other things, but lots of fruit juice goes in there. It's a bit acidic, which makes the whole clarifying thing happen. Unfortunately, when you get an eye-full of citrus, pineapple, and various other juices, you FEEL it. It was like the time I cut a bunch of chilies and then took out my contact lenses. It was like I imagined an eyedropper full of  sulfuric acid would be like. I half expected there to be a chunk of eye missing. My eyes teared.

I tried to flush my eye with water, but I forgot I had the faucet on hot, so I scalded my burned eye before I managed to turn the handle to cool. I also used up half a bottle of eye drops flushing my eye out. It was the sort of red of the apples stereotypically given to elementary school teachers. It took me over a half hour to manage to keep my eye open. Almost another half hour before it stopped feeling like my eyelid was made of sandpaper.

Now, of course, I want safety goggles for the shower, and I'll never trust this particular shampoo bottle again. Stupid life. Stupid burned cornea. And what was I thinking, not having a white button-down shirt? I would so have worn boots and black pants and an eyepatch and gone to work as a pirate today. The kids would've loved it.

Ten Holy Grail Beauty Products

Nicole did a post a while ago of the ten products she can't live without. (Click the link to read hers!) While I am SO LATE to the party, I decided I would do the same thing. I made this decision this morning when I was doing my makeup and looked down to see that my makeup was perfectly arranged for an Instagram picture. Who am I to turn down the perfect opportunity for Instagram?

So here they are, my ten holy grail beauty products:

1. Tarte Amazonian Clay 12-Hour Blush. This is not a lie, it really is a 12-hour blush. It does not rub off, wipe off, or wear off, even with incredibly oily skin. The color payout is fantastic. The blushes last forever. I've had the shade Fearless for over a year, and recently I bought a second, Blushing Bride, just to have a different shade. I would have every color of these, because they're just that great. Did I mention I pitched* my other blushes after one week of using this? Because I did.

2. Naked Basics Palette. I have the first one, but I also love the colors in the second one. I think when I replace mine (I've hit pan on two colors and almost on a third), I'll try the second one. I am big into using neutral brown shadows, and let's face it, that's what the Naked Basics palette contain. The color payout is (again) fantastic--noticing a theme?--and the shadows aren't too powdery to work with easily.

3. Tarte Amazonian Clay Full Coverage Foundation.** This lasts all day, matches my INCREDIBLY pale skin, doesn't break me out, and covers imperfections beautifully. This is the summer-Laura shade (Light Sand); I learned this winter that I'll need to go a bit lighter in January.

4. Maybelline Eye Studio Color Tattoo in Bad to the Bronze. This is a new purchase for me, but I've worn it every day since I bought it. It's absolutely fantastic, never budges, and I love using it with the darker shades in my Naked Basics palette. I need a dozen other colors.

5. Lavanilla. I'm listing the whole brand even though that's cheating. I use their deodorant, their body butter, their sunscreen, their perfume...I love the whole brand. I'm not allergic to anything they make. The vanilla fragrance isn't overly juvenile or sweet. It's more of a grown-up vanilla scent, and I would marry the brand and have its babies if that were physically possible. Sadly, it's not.

6. LUSH Sympathy for the Skin. This lotion is fantastic. It makes your skin smell amazing and--you guessed it--it's safe for allergy-sufferer Laura to use. It is a great everyday body lotion. Love. Love. Love.

7. Kiehl's Midnight Recover Concentrate. This rescued my incredibly dehydrated skin this winter. Now that it's summer, I've needed it less. I love how it makes my skin feel, and it helps my skin bounce back from breakouts without weeks of hyperpigmentation. It's pricey, but one of the small bottles has lasted me since November--and I'm not even halfway through it.

8. LUSH Honey I Washed the Kids. The best smelling soap ever made. I am never without this.

9. LUSH Love Juicy Shampoo. This is incredibly clarifying and brilliant for someone living with fine hair and hard water. It gets all the product buildup out of my hair. I ALWAYS pair this with a conditioner, because you do want a conditioner with any shampoo that is this clarifying. Someone with less water problems might find this too much to use more than once a week, but it's wonderful for our water.

10. Kiehl's LIP BALM #1. This is the best lip balm ever made, hands down. THE BEST EVER. Throw away all other lip balms and buy this.

So there you go. My favorite products I'd take with me if the zombie apocalypse went down and I still wanted to look pretty. Even though I would look prettier than the zombies, even without any makeup on, so I don't know who I'd be trying to impress. But maybe I'd meet a nice zombie hunter, or be clinging to what little sense of normalcy I had left, or maybe the library would stay open during the zombie apocalypse, so I'd still have to go to work and look alive. No pun intended.

Needless to say, no one gave me free stuff or paid me to put any of these products on my list, I just really love them. Although I would not turn down free stuff, I am a librarian and we don't make the big bucks. Also I like free stuff. Who doesn't like free stuff?

I didn't list conditioner, mascara, concealer, or lip colors because I'm not monogamous with those. I try a different mascara every time I pick one up. I'm still trying to find the right concealer for my skin tone, and I really want a full-coverage one, which makes it even harder to find for me. I use lightweight conditioners, right now I'm using one in the Clear range, but I'm not 100% obsessed with it. I would try others. And I am a lipstick junkie, so I can't tell you, "This is my signature color!" because that changes every day. There are so many lip products in my purse at any given time, it's a bit embarrassing. Last count, there were 12.

* Not wanting to waste anything, I cleaned them with a bit of rubbing alcohol and handed them to Mum, who used them for a while until she tried my Tarte blush, pitched them and went to buy her own Tarte blush. We are a Tarte blush house now.

** Yes, this has SPF, but not the chemical I'm allergic to, so if you're sensitive to foundations with SPF for the same reason I am, you're safe.

LUSH Splurge

If you are Jennifer or The Brother, you know that all I've been watching lately (other than home improvement stuff) has been YouTube videos from beauty vloggers like Essie Button, Amelia Liana, Megan Rienks, Zoella, and Ingrid Nilsen. And one constant between all their channels is haul videos. I don't know why I love haul videos so much, but I do. Maybe it is because other people are spending money, so I get the happiness of new things without having to spend any money.

But today. Today I did spend money. At LUSH, which is one of my favorite places.

Part of this is Rachael's fault, because I tend to shop fast and today she looked around longer than I did, resulting in my thinking "Maybe I need two more things..." and then buying the two things. I told the lady at the store to put everything in the one bag, though, so it would seem like I did not buy stuff and then buy more stuff. The shame of checking out twice wasn't enough to stop me from buying more, it was just enough to make me want to HIDE that I was buying more.

Yes.

I try to only go into LUSH once every six months or so, because it's a problem. I mean, I'm allergic to almost everything that has a smell, and there's LUSH, all good-smelling and NOT causing me to almost die of asthma! At LUSH, I get to decide "I want this because it smells good," instead of "I have to buy this product even though it stinks or doesn't work, because I did a patch test and didn't get sick."

LUSH is a miracle place, and my love for it is akin to the love the average preteen girl had for Bath and Body Works when I was in junior high. Except, back then, I couldn't understand why all the pretty-smelling lotions gave me a migraine or made me throw up and want to die. Now we know.



Here's my LUSH "haul." That is in quotes because no, I am not making you a YouTube video. That is not my thing.

Oatifix face mask. The face masks at LUSH have to live inside your fridge or they go bad, because they include fresh fruits and things. This one is oatmeal and smashed bananas and other goodness. It's supposed to moisturize your skin and calm it down. It makes your face smell like a cookie.

Honey, I Washed the Kids soap. This is what I went to LUSH to buy. It is my favorite soap of all time, the first LUSH product I've ever used, and the one bath product I cannot live without. It smells like honey and caramel and everything that's right with the world. The soaps at LUSH come in giant chunks like the huge wheels of Parmesan cheese you see in fancy shops. They take a knife and hack slices off for you to buy, so if you want, you can get big pieces to keep at home. I just get soap-shaped pieces so I have an excuse to go back to LUSH. This is called self-sabotage.

Soft Coeur. This is a massage bar, but no one is giving me any massages, so I plan on using it as a solid moisturizer. That's what the lady at LUSH told me to do. You rub it on your skin and it melts a bit, then you put down the bar and rub your skin some more until it is absorbed. I got this specifically for my elbows and knees. They need some extra TLC. Also I got this because it smells like Honey, I Washed the Kids. If you tell me something smells like that soap, I will buy it no matter what it does.

Stepping Stone. This is a foot scrubber. It is shaped like a foot. It smells, I kid you not, like lemon Pez. It reminds me of everything that was good about my preteen years, and by that, I mean it reminds me of The Pretender.* Also it is shaped like a foot. LIKE A FOOT.



Sun. This is one of LUSH's perfumes. This smells like citrus peel. It's bright and summery and makes me happy. Plus--See how safe LUSH is for me? I can actually buy their perfume...and WEAR it. I can wear perfume on special occasions now, or when I've been outside and gotten overheated and want to pretend I've showered! This is brilliant. I have their Vanillary solid perfume, too. I love it!



I know that's too much stuff, but now I am at home, surrounded by lovely-smelling things, and I feel like this guy:



* Jared always ate Pez.